Advancing Medical Professionalism and the Choosing Wisely Campaign—Reply

In Reply We did not intend to criticize the Choosing Wisely campaign of the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM) Foundation.¹ In fact, we believe that Caring Wisely,² in which many professional medical societies have created “top 5” lists of tests and procedures that should be avoided, has been a very effective intervention to prompt physicians, patients, and professional organizations to begin to address ways to minimize low-value health care. The approach of deferring how to create lists of low-value tests and procedures to the appropriate professional organizations was shrewd, resulting in engagement by many societies, peer pressure on those that did not engage, and the emergence of best practices. Many professional societies have done an excellent job, engaging their members in transparent, democratic, and methodologically sound processes to highlight activities to avoid that are common, harmful, and costly.